


by starlight i know you

by tinydragon (tiny_dragon)



Series: every moon and blinking sun [7]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-28
Updated: 2018-01-28
Packaged: 2019-03-10 15:08:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13504092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiny_dragon/pseuds/tinydragon
Summary: in which the L word is said





	by starlight i know you

**Author's Note:**

> requested by an anon on tumblr! months ago! but i hope you enjoy regardless!!  
> as usual please enjoy my weird ass ramblings i hope they make sense. remind me why i study creative writing again??

Here is a thing about being in love that nobody ever really bothers to tell you: it’s terrifying.

            Nico doesn’t like to go on about it (who is he kidding – he’s had enough teenage angst to write several self-help book, and those royalties are pretty tempting) but he’s dealt with his fair share of pretty scary moments.

            He’s been imprisoned in a jar, kidnapped by giants, ostracised from the New York equivalent of the Happiest Place on Earth (Full title: When Olympus Can Deal with Its Own Shit for Once) and fought in several wars. He has battled monsters, learned how to raise the literal dead, and had a monumentally embarrassing crush on Percy Jackson. He was ten years old for seventy years and man, does that fuck with your body clock.

            But this?

            This is something else.

            It’s not that Nico doesn’t know Will loves him. Will is the least subtle person ever when it comes to these kind of things – the type to kiss your nose and play really lame post-grunge love songs that use the weirdest metaphors you could possibly come up with, to buy unbearably thoughtful birthday presents and sneak into your cabin late at night, on anniversaries of bad things, with a Nintendo DS and half a dozen pokemon games.

            Will doesn’t say it, because he doesn’t want to freak Nico out. But also he doesn’t really need to – because Nico just knows.

            One time, he said it – when he stayed over at the Hades cabin and forced him to play pick-up sticks for an hour and when they eventually actually went to bed, he was half-asleep, face smushed into a pillow and his arm slung around Nico’s waste. He mumbled, half-audible, something like, “love you.”

            And Nico?

            He freaked the fuck out. Shadow-travelled out of his cabin after he was sure Will was properly asleep, banged on the door of the Zeus cabin until Jason had to quite literally seize him from reach of the harpies.

            That’d definitely been a tense night.

            And he’d paced Jason’s cabin for an unnecessarily long time, banging on about commitment and whys and _I can’t actually believe this why would someone like that love someone like me and also what if I don’t love him back_?

            Because this is a really scary thing that no one brings up: what if you’re not ready to love someone back?

            Nico knows a lot about fear. He has felt all kinds of things – hate and anger and revenge and guilt and all other things navy and grey and dark. He has significantly less experience with the feeling of love.

            Love is something that people feel in bright colours, and for a long time, Nico’s world was dark. In old memories, from another time, from another world – love is pastel coloured, rosemary. It is Bianca in a pale blue dress, and his mother changing his bedsheets so that they are fresh and clean and smell like mints, and she cuddles him up and he falls asleep to dim light and stars outside.

            Once upon a time, love was a series of very sharp teeth, and a pair of blue eyes. The sound of rushing water and a lot of dark things – ghosts for friends and loneliness and trying really very hard but to no avail.

            That’s the darkest that love has ever been.

            Will is a bright colour – Will is cornflower blue and yellow gold, orange like the fur of a Bengal tiger, pink and purple, that grass everyone talks about, that’s meant to be greener on the other side.

            Will feels in bright colours. Will loves in bright colours, and so: how could he ever hope to love someone so dark?

            And so that night while Will slept and the stars shone and Ella tried her best to calm down the raging harpies running amok in camp, Nico paced until Jason shook his shoulders.

            “Breathe,” he said, and Nico breathed.

            Jason is bright and dark, gold and purple. Reyna is sharp lines and cool, confident colours – strong and bold, gold and red and bronze. Hazel is soft and warm, silver and lavender, and magic things, like gems that grow legs to walk over and find you and horses that will take you all over the world.

            His friends keep him grounded, keep his feet on the ground, keep the colour in the world and he loves them.

            “You don’t have to say it back,” Jason told him. Hands still on his shoulders, steadying him. Piece by piece, he removes bits of the underworld from atop Nico’s back.

            “Don’t I?” Nico asked.

            Jason shook his head. “No,” he said. “You can take as long as you like and when you’re ready Will’s still gonna love you.”

            Nico snorted. “Who are you, the Oracle of Delphi?”

            “No, but I’ve got to hope for the best – I’ve put money on the two of you being together forever.”

            So Will said it once and Nico didn’t say anything back and the time passed and Will woke up and they never mentioned it again. Will didn’t say “I love you”, for fear of catching a deer in the headlights, for fear of startling a thing that is often easily spooked. So he waited and he never said it again, but Nico still knew.

            Because you know – in the way that someone slings their arm over your body to sleep, and even if you shadow-travel out of their reach, their arm will stay like that, poised like it’s protecting, until they wake up alone. In asking what’s wrong sometimes but other times not pushing for an answer. In the way that they introduce you to their family and to their friends with stars in their eyes, like you’re a book they’ve written or a picture they’ve painted – like you’re some kind of art.

            When they cling but they know when to let you go. When if you need them in the night they will be there and if you feel like you need to sleep until the end of the world they will pop up, at random intervals, with a mug of hot cocoa and a slice of toast and remind you to eat.

            This is why love is so scary: because no one tells you how long it will last and people can fall in and out of love to the same rhythm of moon shift, or sunset.

            Being in love is really scary. Letting someone in can be really scary.

            But Will – Will is already here.

            They’re curled up close because the Hades’ cabin might be near-empty but it still has the camp standard single bunkbeds. Whenever Nico is annoying him, Will will clamber up the ladder until Nico moans that he’s cold and Will is warm and fine, he’ll shut up, can Will just _come back_ – and then Will does, with this huge grin on his face.

            They’ve already passed that point in the night. For now: Will is nearly nodding off, because he falls with the sun and rises with it at daybreak. The sleeves of his jumper are itchy and Nico is only putting up with it because he looks sort of adorable in it. The blonde curls of his hair tickle at Nico’s neck.

            “Will,” Nico says. He swallows a lump of something back down into his throat – a mouthful of sea water, monster dust, fear.

            Will yawns, but he opens his eyes – big and blue – and he blinks owlishly.

            “Yeah?” he says. He reaches one of his hands up to brush the sleep-dust from his lids.

            Nico pauses. And then he moves in quickly and presses his lips against Will’s, and kisses him gently.

            He pulls back and Will’s smiling.

            “Thanks for that,” he says.

            “You’re welcome.”

            Nico feels his cheeks blush.

            He’d always thought that everybody he loved got taken away. There was mama and Bianca and Percy, who wasn’t gone exactly, but hated his guts. The feeling of love caused a flinch and a pang of fear and he avoided it like the plague the way one might Brussel sprouts or broccoli or if you’re Will Solace, fast-food chicken.

            Those colours, swept away in the dark, by a storm, by the sea.

            But there’s Jason and there’s Reyna and there’s Hazel, and they aren’t gone.

            There’s Will, and he’s not gone.

            “Hey, Will?”

            Another yawn.

            “Yeah?”

            “I love you.”

            Will smiles in the dark. Nico’s heart bangs and bangs and pinches with the way that Will’s freckled cheeks glow, at the way his dimples lift.

            “I know,” Will says. Underneath the duvet covers, his hands fumble in the dark, until they find Nico’s and reach out and tangle together.

            The sleeves of his jumper are itchy and inconvenient. Nico wants to make a comment about it ruining the moment but Will squeezes his hand and the feeling goes straight to his heart.

            And Nico loves him, stupid, itchy sweaters and all.

            But Will hasn’t finished talking. He yawns again; his eyes close.

            “I love you too,” he says.

**Author's Note:**

> i am on tumblr at willandlyra! please come and say hi and leave feedback if you can :)


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